Archive for the ‘What Gerry’s groovin’ to’ Category

Neil Young’s roving and rocking spirit look at the America of today. Hit and miss in places – but some hard rock and roll such as opener ‘Already Great’.

Dark Matter – Randy Newman

Newman in typical sardonic form with his first album in nearly a decade and trademark laidback musical style and acerbic lyrics, ‘Putin’ being one of the best.

Damn – Kendrick Lamar

Not as stellar and pathbreaking as ‘To Pimp a Butterfly’ from 2015 but this is R ‘n’ B with personal reflection and social conscience.

How the West Was Won – Peter Perrett

The uplifting music story of the year – once singer of new wave legends The Only Ones gets his life in order and returns with great tunes, lyrics and guitars.

Soul of a Woman – Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings

Jones made it as a star in her 40s and her soul sound gave Amy Winehouse her ‘Back in Black vibe. Sadly she died in 2016 and this is her last album filled with the spirit and passionate vocals she was known for. Read the rest of this entry »

2016 will be certainly be remembered as a year and for more important things than music. But it was also a year of musical genius and of great losses – which words are not adequate to describe. Without further to do my musical highs:

MY BEST ALBUMS

David Bowie – Black Star

A magnificent goodbye. Bowie’s best album since the early 1980s. Not easy listening and with added pathos.

Nino Katamadze and Insight – Yellow

A Georgian Goldfrapp – only more melodic without losing the experimental edge. Latest in a series of themed albums: ‘Black’, ‘White’, ‘Blue’. Love them all.

Solange – A Seat at the Table

Solange finally delivers the big album and promise after years of changing and shifting styles.

For some reason over the last few weeks I began thinking about my Desert Island Disc choices. In part it has been listening to the show a bit more of late – usually by accident, rather than design – caused by an increase in Radio 4 listening.

Then there is my rising dissatisfaction with the conservatism and smug self-satisfaction with what modern pop culture has turned into. People going on about the Beatles. Give it a rest. The sixties. Punk and new wave which turned out to be even more insufferable and filled with aged bores and dinosaurs than the hippies. The indie scene of the 1980s. The Smiths, New Order or whoever else was at that Sex Pistols gig in Manchester they all lie about!

I used to love the Beatles. I still do, but maybe one day I will really like their music again. And it is getting that way for me for a lot of popular music which is just too over-exposed and too the received wisdom of what you are meant to like. You know the Mark Kermode/Stuart Maconie view of life: Joy Division as the central defining point of the musical universe. Then on thru the usual reference points.

All of this got myself thinking – what records would I want to take from the mainstream pop and rock culture of our times since the 1960s. Not many. I could happily live without nearly all of them. So here is my eight …. No Beatles or 1980s indie rock or lots of other things. Just an oddball list of things I think filled with something …. grace, style, affirming life and something special …. Read the rest of this entry »

Into the final furlong. This has been both exhausting and exhilarating; now I know how much work those boys and girls at ‘NME’ and ‘Uncut’ work on their end of year lists. For me personally it has been an even more varied, stimulating and utterly captivating decade in music than ever before.

There are though some interesting (and some ominous signs) in the state of music (and I am not just taking about Cowell and the X Factor). There is the state of pop and plastic pop in particular. Apart from Girls Aloud, whose Greatest Hits appears in this list who else is championing catchy disposable pop and making great singles; Will Young, Gareth Gates, Leona Lewis, I mean, seriously! Trashy pop matters as the great days of Wham! and Culture Club show in the 1980s, who were great early on when they were in their ‘pop’ phases.

Then there is the state of music which engages with and shapes the political mood. Given what has happened in the last decade: Bush, Blair and the march of the neo-liberals, where are the subtle albums and songs about the state of democracy in Britain, America, and the never-ending wars? Green Day’s ‘American Idiot’ hardly counts as a learned tome; instead where are the equivalents of the Specials ‘Ghost Town’ and even Pink Floyd’s ‘The Final Cut’, an album subtitled ‘A requiem for the post-war dream’? Read the rest of this entry »